The Redpath Mansion Mystery

This one is a gigantic tangle, and unfortunately there are few sources for it online. I'll try to sum up:

The Redpath family were members of a small, wealthy elite in turn-of-the century Montreal. You might recognize the name from the sugar bags- they founded the Redpath company. In 1901, the family matriarch (Ada Maria Mills Redpath) and her twenty-four-year-old son (Jocelyn Clifford Redpath) were found shot to death in Ada's bedroom, with a revolver lying on the floor between them. The bodies were discovered by Ada's son Peter, who testified at the inquest that Clifford had arrived home, entered his mother's bedroom, and shot her, shooting himself afterwards. However, due to the fact that police were never notified of the incident (probably due to the family's status in the community), there are no concrete records of what happened- only newspaper accounts, which are almost all contradictory. Even the witness statements are inconsistent- Peter initially claimed that he heard two shots, but later changed his story to three. Peter also claimed at the inquest that there was only one revolver found at the scene, but a doctor testified that there were two, suggesting that an intruder may have been responsible. One of the doctors who arrived at the scene claimed that Clifford had foam in his mouth, and the family physician testified that Clifford may have shot his mother and then himself while in the midst of a seizure. However, there are no other medical or familial records suggesting that Clifford suffered from epilepsy. (The doctor in question also went on to marry Ada Redpath's daughter Amy- so he had a good reason to paint the whole situation in the best light possible.) Other suggested motives have been a mercy killing, as Ada was bedridden with rheumatism, and a coming-out gone wrong (Peter also later claimed that his brother was gay, and that he may have intended to tell his mother as much that night.) Whatever really happened will probably never be known- the story of what happened was quite literally buried with Clifford and Ada, as they were interred less than two days after their deaths. The mansion was demolished last year.

It's an interesting mystery--was intrigued to read about Ada's invalidism symptoms of eye ulcers, joint pain, and facial (prossibly trigeminal) neuralgias, which suggest some sort of autoimmune disease--possibly Sjogren's Syndrome, which can, in some (rare) cases, lead to psychosis and mental illness.

I think the idea of Clifford having a seizure is kinda ludicrous. While it's the sort of thing you'd expect people like the Redpaths to keep to themselves (epilepsy throughout history had something of a stigma about it, though I dunno if it extended to the early 20th century), the idea of someone in the midst of a grand mal seizure having the physical and mental wherewithal to aim and fire a gun at his mother before shooting himself in the forehead is just...no. If anything, the gunshot to the head may have set off a seizure (depending on location) or muscle spasms that created "foam".

Anyway, unless you exhumed Ada and Clifford, I can't imagine this case ever being solved--even then you'd only be able to rule out suspects, not identify one in particular. And the Redpath family would probably not be too interested in that. Amy, the eldest daughter and Clifford's elder sister, an intellectual woman who pretty much ran the house, if not the family (she even rewrote some of Clifford's law papers for him, according to the second weblink), probably knew what happened. I read the poem she wrote about Clifford after his death (also on the second website, which is really rather wonderfully done) trying to see if there were any hints as to what happened (eg, an acrostic spelling out I DID IT) but it was just a benign memorial.

Also occurred to me that for a homosexual to come out of the closet, particularly a member of such a rigid upper-class society would have been really unusual. Incidentally, I recall from a bio of Oscar Wilde that blackmailing homosexuals was something of a cottage industry in big cities in those days--particularly if the man in question was an upper-class man seeking sexual relations with lower-class individuals. And while you may come across historic homosexuals whose predilections were more or less winked at back then (or at least accepted-but-not-spoken-of), the idea of one matter-of-factly informing his bed-ridden mother of the fact seems wild. Unless she was gonna find out anyway...

Sort of entertaining the theory that Amy, responsible acting-matriarch, clipped them both--the mother because she was miserable, melancholic and a burden; Clifford because he was being blackmailed/going public with his homosexuality and would thus bring shame to the family. Amy, despite her money, breeding, intellect, etc. spent most of her time caring for her mother, and didn't marry until her late 30's. It's a good story at any rate.

If the stuff about the mother being suicidal and in chronic pain every single day...I could see her son putting her out of her misery. Perhaps after that he couldn't live with himself and took his own life?

What about the son that found them dead? I don't like mysteries like this that have no way of being solved, so frustrating.

Considering they were one of the wealthiest families in Canada at the time (a kind of wealth that makes people immune from standard police investigation), I think there's one theory that's generally accepted: the son killed his mother and then killed himself (who knows why, though the "gay" theory is as good as any) and the family used their wealth/connections to keep it as quiet as possible.

Unfortunately, in the 1970s, when a lot of old buildings in Montreal were being torn down, this house was bulldozed in the middle of the night (literally, between like 2 and 4 in the morning). They built some sh**ty apartment tower in its place. An unscrupulous developer, plus a city council who didn't have much love for old mansions that had been built by the English (historically there's been lots of French/English tension in Montreal), meant there was no will to preserve it.

EDIT: While there was a lot of demolition of Montreal historic buildings in the 70s and 80s, the Redpath mansion was actually demolished last year. Just realized I used to hang out by the ruins of it all the time during my university days. It was one of the only quiet/tree-filled spots in downtown Montreal.

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